What am I fighting for?

I’ve been thinking hard about what makes someone happy and fulfilled. This started around 10 years ago, when I watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on “Finding Your Element”.

https://youtu.be/qKRRF8lBDuQ

Growth: Power

This started a pursuit and exploration process that has led to growth, experiences, and a rollercoaster of emotions. Since that time, I got married, have co-founded 5 startups, fostered 3 startup communities, lived in 4 countries, lectured over 300 students, and worked for various tech companies…

However, I somehow felt there was a lingering feeling of being lost. Every path led to professional growth, but little personal satisfaction.

People I love would scold at me: “You should be happy now! Why do you keep complaining? I don’t understand. You should calm down, settle down, breathe, and stop striving.”

I’ve tried many things since then looking for an answer within. Coaches, psychologists, counseling from friends, diet and exercise, surfing, meditation, martial arts, and even temazcal rituals (I’m Ecuadorian).

I envy those who can patiently and diligently dedicate their lives to draining or stressful work for decades. I feel depressed thinking that perhaps I lack that grittiness, or patience, or tolerance. Or perhaps I haven’t found that gold at the end of the rainbow.

As a non-conformist, I also feel that my decisions are made to satisfy an “expected image” of myself (maybe self invented, maybe inherited, maybe socially calibrated), a perfect idolized persona who is ever beyond the horizon: the successful startup founder, the achieved senior business developer, the ideal role model for students. This hedonic treadmill never seems to stop. It can also feel lonely at times.

Or maybe I’m just full of it!

https://youtu.be/8QjbxB5A6mE

Wandering: Wisdom

Looking for an answer, I’ve also dived deep into books.

I read both Designing Your Life and Designing Your Work Life from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans at Stanford D- School. These books teach you about reframing and include cases on how people have applied design thinking and similar tools to reinvent themselves. They also explain a few mind hacks to feel grateful and content, all while studying authority and influence within organizations. These help strategically position yourself for your next steps through managed storytelling.

They also talk about solving minimum actionable problems (MAP); the balance between money, impact, and expression in your work; and how you should monitor your sense of fulfillment (the harmonic balance between your work view — what a good job is for you —, and your life view — what a life well lived means for you).

Although these books are a great resource to brainstorm and focus, they are no substitute for pathological stress or burnout, nor hold an answer for my most lingering questions, such as: “What should I be doing with my life at this point?”, “Why should I continue to push forward?”, “What am I fighting for?”

https://youtu.be/OBU3YB47Jmw

Other books I’ve dived into include What I Wish I Knew When I Was Twenty, from Tina Seelig, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, from Cal Newport, The Element, and Finding Your Element, from Sir Ken Robinson. These also talk, among many other things, about honing your skills to eventually land on your passion, and also on what makes you unique. With special emphasis on creativity, innovation, and self confidence.

I’m also rereading How Will You Measure Your Life, from the late Clayton Christensen. And, just like many other authors, he mentions something that is key to my core: relationships beat work.

Clayton talked about motivation factors: challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth; and hygiene factors: status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. Extrinsic and intrinsic forces. When opposing, these can have you loving and hating your work at the same time.

In summary, measure your life based on how many lives you’ve impacted (especially for family and friends), and stay trustworthy to your morals with integrity. Simple and universal.

This corresponds to the Global Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Happy Planet Index, and many other arbitrary rankings that find that closeness to family and friends, economic freedom, and safety are important factors for overall life satisfaction.

Again, these books shed a light on the How, not the Why. And of course, each person must find a personal Why.

https://youtu.be/NW3_a9hWBo0

And then it hit me. A Why is more intrinsic: motivation, or life view related, than extrinsic: hygiene, or work view related. My work view is a consequence of my life view, not the other way around. Of course it is…

Why’s should come from within.

https://youtu.be/IPYeCltXpxw

Epiphany: Courage

Then I listed, from a motivational perspective (filtering any work views or expected personas): Why did I start all those companies? Why did I go back to my country after living overseas? Why did I apply for those jobs or accelerators? Why did I enjoy what I enjoyed during those experiences? Why did I like mentoring and lecturing others?

I want to own my life, how, where, and with whom I live it, and how much I’m making. I want to create the best conditions possible for my loved ones. I want to learn as much as I can to one day control my sources of income. Because I like feeling free and in control. Because I want to share this freedom and autonomy with others.

As I design a contrarian way of life for myself, this was an epiphany: I need to strategically design my own freedom.

This has nothing to do with startups, it has nothing to do with tech, or even with developed or emerging economies, it has to do with the joy of freedom. It has to do with controlling my reality, my place, my time. It has to do with sharing it with others who need their reality liberated from the rat race.

I don’t know the shape it will take. But I will create this. Quickly. Relentlessly. Convicted. Restless. I will make this “freely controlled life” my passion. And I’ll work to design and own my understanding of it.

I will swing the ball and chain and use it to smash walls.

In the next few years, you may see me consulting, meeting, starting up, blogging, coaching, advising, or whatever. I don’t care. I’ll play any game needed as long as it contributes to amassing freedom (legally).

This is how I’ll measure my life: the number of people I love that I’ve set free with me.